


Keepin' All My Secrets

by Nevcolleil



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 06:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14635556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevcolleil/pseuds/Nevcolleil
Summary: Life is good when you're married to the man of your dreams and doing the job you know in your heart you were born to do.Sorta sucks when the latter can't know anything about the former - especially when it turns out that one has way more to do with the other than you could have imagined.(i.e. Your husband may or may not be the assassin you've secretly been hunting for the past three years... and you're relatively certain that he's gearing up to kill you for it now.)a.k.a. the 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' AU no one has asked for





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The "that nobody asked for" thing is so cliche :p but apropos. I don't know that anyone will appreciate a 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU' in this pairing... but hopefully you'll like this well enough to read til the end as it nears. I've had the idea in my head for a while, and then the Season 2 finale just filled in so many plot holes... how could I resist? 
> 
> The title is based on "Nobody Does It Better" by Carly Simon.

Mac gets a weird feeling as he rushes around the ranch house with Bozer on his heels, his right hand drifting repeatedly to his pocket, like it’s forgotten that the remains of the phone to be found there couldn’t help ease Mac’s mind even if Mac hadn’t tossed his sim card out somewhere near the outskirts of the city. 

Mac held off doing it for as long as he safely could, but Riley never did answer her cell. She hasn’t responded to a single one of Mac’s texts, which isn’t like her, and now Mac gets the weirdest feeling of being in one of those silly rom coms Jack sometimes insists on them watching when they have time for tv. (When they aren’t already marathoning the Die Hard films or some other Bruce Willis classic.)

Mac’s sat through more than one where the couple splits up and their kids immediately take sides. Not that Mac sees Riley, in any way, as a literal _kid_ \- regardless of her place in Jack’s life as his sort-of-stepdaughter - but that’s always been kind of a playful joke between them. The way Riley calls Jack and Mac ‘Pops’ and ‘Dad’ like they’re her actual parents...

Mac has to pause, thinking about it, for just a moment. He and Bozer have already emptied the secret stashes Mac had all around the house, and now he’s filling duffel bags with as many of his more personal but no less disposable things as he can in the time that they have to clear out. That’s hard enough to do _without_ thinking-

And Mac has to pause, squeeze his eyes shut around the pain, and just breathe as he does it.

 _Called_. The way Riley _called_ Jack ‘Pop’ and Mac ‘Dad’, is the gist of Mac’s thoughts. That’s all past tense now. It has to be. If Jack hasn’t found out - yet - that Mac’s found _him_ out, he will. And then this little game of ‘happy family’ Jack’s been playing with Mac will all be over, one way or the other. If Riley’s been a part of it from the beginning, she’ll most likely be gunning for Mac just as surely as Jack is. And if she hasn’t, Mac will have to do his best to avoid her and her family. Jack’s known them for much longer than he’s known Mac, and up until about an hour ago, Mac would have thought it impossible that Jack would ever hurt any of them, least of all Riley...

But up until about an hour ago, Mac would have also thought it impossible that he’d ever need to go to ground to avoid his partner of almost six years. His _husband_ for just over three.

Now Mac tosses items into his duffel almost indiscriminately, hands shaking no matter how much he tries to steady them. He’s about to go to ground to avoid the _assassin_ he’s been married to for over three years, without ever having suspected, and a part of him is almost _glad_ that odds are Riley had known it was just a lie from day one.

As far as Mac is concerned, everyone he’s met since he met Jack has become suspect in light of today’s revelations. It’s almost easier for Mac to consider them all as being complicit to Jack’s lies, rather than agonize over who might possibly be innocent. Right now Mac can’t trust himself to trust anyone other than the three people who’d been in the room with him when he learned the truth about his marriage.

One of whom is already shouting at him by the time Mac can hear, over the blood rushing in his ears and the thoughts spiralling through his head. And the sound of glass cracking and splintering.

“ _Whoa_! Whoa, whoa, Mac...” Mac finally registers Bozer’s words - just before he registers the pain shooting through his right hand and up his arm.

The fragile, all-glass picture frame in Mac’s hand - the one holding his once favorite photo of him and Jack together - has broken in Mac’s grasp. Mac drops it, bloody shards and all, into his bag and ignores Bozer’s fussing over his hand to sweep the rest of the items on his desk into the duffle on top of it.

“Mac, man, I know you’re freaking out right now,” Boz is saying, just watching helplessly as Mac pulls away and continues picking and choosing which parts of his former life to take with him when he walks out of this house for the last time. A duffel of his own, likewise full of Mac’s things, sits at Bozer’s feet. “ _I’m_ freaking out,” Bozer admits, “but maybe we oughtta slow down for a second and try to process this.”

“Slow is _exactly_ what we can’t do, Boz,” Mac says walking to the closet and throwing open the double doors, grabbing a row of garments without paying attention to what they are other than on Mac’s side of the rack. “Jack could be back in the States any minute. If his Exfil team is anywhere near as fast as ours? He could be in LA before sunup.”

“I cannot wrap my head around the thought of _Jack_ working for somebody with an Exfil team,” Bozer only says as Mac throws his clothes onto the bed in a stack and turns back to grab another. “I thought the dude sold bathroom tiles for a living. _Bathroom tiles_ , Mac!”

“So did I,” Mac says only loud enough to be heard. He barely feels his own lips move to say it.

“It’s just- _Jack_? Jack Dalton? Crazy band tees... cries during sad movies... corny jokes Jack?” Bozer keeps talking, like now that he’s started, he can’t quite stop. “Are we _sure_ he’s really-”

“You saw, Bozer,” Mac replies numbly, dropping another armload on the bed. He can’t entertain even the _notion_ that what they saw could have been a misunderstanding of some kind. He’s having enough trouble grasping the truth of things without allowing fantasy to distract him. Fantasy questions like: what if Jack didn’t _know_ that the guys he had a shootout with just an hour ago were the good guys? What if he has a perfectly good reason for lying to Mac about what he does for a living - the same as Mac does for lying to him? What if he’d meant... something else when he’d told a member of Mac’s team ‘Don’t you boys get tired of dying for this?' before shooting the man in the face.

What if he just moves and looks and _sounds_ like the same guy that’s taken out _every_ member of Mac’s team that Mac’s sent to try and capture Suspect 218 over the years?

“We all saw," Mac makes himself speak the reality aloud. “He didn’t bother to cover his face this time, didn’t avoid the cameras. It was him.” Mac has to swallow before saying the worst of it. ”It‘s always been him.”

Mac’s husband is either the assassin the CIA calls only Suspect 218, or he’s an assassin with a damned strong reason to keep 218 alive. Mac’s been fighting his hardest to take 218 down - out of all the missions he’s completed since he was recruited by the agency, he’s come to prioritize this one - but his nemesis, _Jack_ , has fought harder. Today in Rio is the closest Mac’s men have ever come to 218, and still they walked away empty-handed.

Some didn’t walk away at all, and Mac has Jack to thank for that, whatever he was doing in Rio or for whom.

Mac’s still facing the closet when Bozer asks the one question that really matters.

“Mac... How did this happen?”

Mac does take Bozer’s advice at that, actually. It still counts as slowing down to process even if he does so involuntarily, doesn’t it?

It’s just so hard for Mac to breathe for a moment. With most of his clothes already out of the closet now, all Mac can see in front of him is the absurd combination of the tacky suits Jack always wears out of the house for “work”, the leather and denim he prefers off the clock, and his stupid Metallica t-shirt collection. Folded neatly in tall stacks on two of the shelves that separate Mac’s side of the hanging rack from his.

“I guess he wasn’t as done with “the life” after Afghanistan as he said,” Mac says when he can. 

It’s hardly the worst lie Jack told Mac, in the grand scheme of things, but it _feels_ like one of the worst, to Mac.

The main reason Mac had been unable to tell Jack about his recruitment, about his dad and his mission, had been Jack’s _emphatic_ insistence that he never wanted anything else to do with the CIA or the kind of life he’d lived while he worked for them. 

Mac had vowed to himself from the beginning that he’d help catch 218 - the man who’d taken Mac’s father away from him all those years ago - and then he’d quit and fess up and beg for Jack’s forgiveness. Even after it became clear that he’d underestimated 218, and too much time had passed for Mac to expect to be forgiven, telling Jack the truth had remained Mac’s plan. Mac was prepared to lose the love of his life if it meant making the world - and Jack - a little safer by taking that monster, with his peculiar fixation on Mac’s family, out of it. Mac had never wanted to lie to Jack.

But Jack had been lying to Mac that whole time as well, and he surely hadn’t anticipated on ever telling Mac the truth. After showing him the Rio footage, Mac’s dad cracked open Jack’s old CIA files for Mac and- 

Back in “the Sandbox”, as Jack always calls it, he’d told Mac what he did for the CIA. He’d made it sound no different from the kind of work Mac does now. But the files Mac’s dad was able to show Mac? They told Mac something completely different.

Mac doesn’t protest when Bozer reaches past him and closes the closet doors. 

There’s nothing else in there - in this whole house - that Mac really wants to take with him. He can’t bag the man that Mac had _thought_ he’d fallen in love with and carry him out of this nightmare.

“Well, if we want to be out of here by sundown, we should probably clean this up now,” Bozer says at last, reaching hesitantly for Mac’s wrist - as if he’s afraid Mac will pull away again too quickly and hurt himself worse - and lifting Mac’s hand gently.

There’s actually a _lot_ of blood flowing out of the cuts on Mac’s hand. He takes a shaky breath and tries to choke back the hysterical laughter that bubbles up in him at the sight.

“Yeah, alright,” Mac agrees, calculating the time deficit he’s created by necessitating the first aid. He’s also going to want to clean up the blood he can now see he’s smeared over the closet doors and his desk - dripped onto the carpet in large spots - as well as he can in the time they have left.

Maybe it’s leftover, dumb instinct to want to protect Jack from seeing that Mac’s hurting. (There’s no forensic benefit to the need. If Jack could do anything with a dna sample, he’s had years to get as many as he could want. In... a variety of ways.) Or maybe Mac’s _literally_ lost his mind in all of this - because seeing something bloody - even if it’s his own hand bleeding - suddenly makes Mac feel, oddly, a little better. At least a little bit more like he can function well enough to get off grid. 

A blow like the one Mac’s taken today _should_ draw blood, somehow, Mac thinks woozily. 

If nothing else, at least some part of Mac now looks as messy and damaged as Mac feels.

 

|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|

 

At least a couple of hours away, from a window in the little four passenger craft Mattie was able to magic up for Jack and Riley last minute, somehow, Jack watches waves break beneath them and wonders if he ought to be wishing the water would disappear faster - or slower.

On the one hand, if things are... what they appear to be- Well. Jack’s in no hurry to figure out what exactly he’s supposed to do about it, if he even _can_. 

But on the other. If this is just some sort of crazy, incredible - _impossible_ \- mixup...

If Jack’s gonna get back to LA, bust through the door to the home he’s shared with Mac for the past three years, and find his pretty young husband making that cute face he makes when he’s perplexed by something- (It doesn’t happen often - smart as Mac is, being an actual genius. But Mac does get perplexed from time to time, usually by things Jack’s done or said - often just to get Mac to make that face.)

If that’s what’s waiting for Jack at home, he’d really like to get there quickly, please. To pull his genius close and wrap him up in a hug Jack might not let stop til Mac actually asks him to let go. 

The sun is just rising over the ocean, painting the big blue all sorts of beautiful colors, but Jack closes his eyes to it. The only beautiful thing he wants to see right now is Mac, telling Jack that he has no idea what Jack’s talking about. No, that wasn’t him on a satellite phone Jack pulled off of an enemy combatant while hunting a psychopath through Rio de Janeiro. No, he is not said psychopath - however it might look that he was, apparently, giving orders to a big group of the type of goons that always seem to pop up right after Suspect 218 has made a big splash somewhere, cleaning up the bastard’s messes and wiping his trail.

“Fuck...” Jack finds himself whispering to the small, dim cabin. He scrubs his hands over his face to try and rub away what he knows isn’t a physical sensation of being electrified. It’s panic making Jack’s lips tingle and his skin feel pulled too tight over his face.

Their anonymous pilot pays him no attention, and Riley is asleep in the seat next to Jack’s, hands still clutched around her ruined tech (laptop, tablet, _and_ phone - kid was beside herself when they had to jump in that canal.)

“ _Fuck..._ ,” Jack folds his fingers over his mouth, doubled over with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, and mutters again.

Today had started off as such a normal day, too.

Jack had rolled out of bed at the buttcrack of dawn - which just meant that he had time to wake up his baby with a bunch of kisses across the broad line of his shoulders... down the arch of his spine.

Mac’s enthusiastic response meant they’d had a very good morning indeed before Jack had had to leave for “the office” and Mac had to leave for DXS, the think tank Mac's friend Bozer got Mac a job at after he and Jack left the army.

Jack had tried to get a job like that once he and Mac were back in the States - honest to God he had. 

When he told Mac he’d joined the Rangers to clear his head - and, later, that once he had, he liked that he’d managed to shake most of the worst stuff his time at the agency had left him with out of it - he didn’t lie. He’d gone to the army knowing his time with the CIA was over for good. Then he’d met Angus Macgyver, and once they got going - and then Mac admitted that once his tour was up he was thinking he might like to go back to civilian life, at least for a while - Jack had fully intended to find himself a civie gig too. Maybe something in security. 

Then Mattie had called. She and Jack went way back; Jack had owed her a dozen if he’d owed her one - and he’d owed her plenty. So when Mattie said she’d started up her own agency - a black- _black_ -blackops outfit - and she needed his help getting it off the ground, of course Jack said yes. For as long as it took to get the Phoenix Foundation up and running. And then he’d be done... Honest.

Only it hadn’t worked out that way, had it? 

One mission had turned into two - had turned into twenty - and Mattie isn’t even entirely to blame. Jack can admit it now: he likes the work too much to really _want_ to stop. Which has worked out well in that Jack can’t actually stop now that he’s caught the scent of some of the baddies Mattie started out to get. Not until he helps put at least the first crop away. (Currently, Jack’s just got one last man left to catch to honor the vow he made himself and Mattie back then - but that one’s been a real motherfucker.) And in that the first thing Mattie needed Jack’s help with, in getting her operation running, was someone to run her tech. That had lead to Riley getting involved at the Phoenix, and Jack doesn’t really want to just leave the kid to it now either.

What doesn’t work so well anymore is the promise Jack made Mattie, back in the beginning, to keep their supersecret secret spy business _secret_. From everyone - even Mac - at least until Jack helped Mattie mark off all the names on her own personal most wanted list.

Suspect 218 is on the top of that list. And three years since agreeing to catch him before Jack could tell even his own husband what Jack’s been doing all this time, the closest Jack’s come to even _seeing_ the bastard was today. When Jack shot him from afar - a glancing wound, just along the guy’s right side - but enough to make the sick son-of-a-bitch stumble and _bleed_ a little.

How much closer could Jack have gotten if 218‘s seemingly ever-ready clean-up crew hadn’t shown up right after that? Jack had had to fight his and Riley’s way through them, and by the time he had, 218 was gone. Most of the guy’s goons were gone. The ones Jack had managed to take down, like always, had been dealt with by their own buddies - a double tap to each - leaving them unable to be questioned. Jack’s sure even the bodies have been cleared away by now. Phoenix doesn’t have the resources to collect them. (Jack knows. He tried to Weekend at Bernie’s a body out of Malaysia that one time, and that hadn’t ended well.) Hell, someone had even spilt _bleach_ all over the sidewalk where 218 had been standing when Jack shot him, so they couldn’t get a dna sample to try and identify him with that way.

It was infuriating.

But, again, normal. Jack kicked a wall or two in the immediate aftermath and sent Riley looking for a phone they could call Mattie with, grumbling, but he’s been singing that song for three years now.

What wasn’t normal... was that this time, when Jack patted down the bodies - out of habit more than anything - one of them actually _hadn’t_ been stripped of all his gear. 

He still had a body cam on his flak jacket and a sat phone strapped to his belt.

An accident? Did 218‘s henchmen just get sloppy this time around? Was he not paying them enough anymore...

Or had Jack been meant to find the phone?

Jack swears he didn’t even push a button when he picked the phone up, but maybe his thumb slipped as he lifted it and he didn’t notice? Either way, it called out while right there in Jack’s hand, and when someone picked up on the other end of the line, Jack heard the voice he’d involuntarily called loud and clear.

“Grieger, why the hell are you calling me?” said the voice.

 _Mac’s voice_.

Jack hadn’t even thought. It was stupid, stupid, _stupid_. But he’d heard Mac’s voice - he _knows_ he had - and he just completely forgot himself and said, “Who the hell is this?”

The voice went silent. 

Static. And then the little red light on the bodycam blinked to life. 

A second later the phone went dead, and it and the bodycam started to _smoke_.

By the time Jack had reached the location he and Riley had agreed upon as a rendezvous spot, Riley with a brand new phone in hand, Jack had nearly convinced himself that he’d imagined the similarity of the voice to his husband’s. Some weird kind of reverse wishful thinking or something? 

But he’d tried calling Mac’s cell, and his call went straight to voicemail, which was unusual in the evening. Two calls later, a cheerful recording informed him that the number he was dialing was no longer in service.

If. Jack is _clinging_ to that word. _If_ things aren’t what they appear to be... 

This might not be the worst day of Jack’s life.

But if it is.

“Please...” Jack whispers to no one and everything, sinking his whole face into his hands. And again to the Mac in his head: “Please, baby.”

That’s really the only thing he can figure out to do.


	2. Chapter 2

When Matilda Weber, Mattie - the baddest badass Jack has ever had the pleasure of working with before - struck out on her own, she truly went it alone. At least until she called up Jack.

Jack’s still not sure who in the government actually knows that the Phoenix Foundation exists, although he’s guessing that he could count their number on his fingers. One of the first things that Mattie told Jack when she asked for his help was that if he threw in with her, and things went bad, they could go _really_ bad. 

Mattie has enough friends, and grateful former colleagues, spread out through all of the alphabet agencies for the Phoenix Foundation to exist - and to be able, occasionally, to ask for outside intel or resources; even more occasionally a few extra boots on the ground. But nothing more. If a Phoenix agent gets caught doing something any average citizen shouldn’t, somewhere he or she shouldn’t - by someone they can’t shake - they’re done for. Jack’s understood this from the beginning.

‘Same old song and dance they taught us back at the Farm,’ Jack said, the first and only time he and Mattie discussed it. ‘I got it.’

She was _fierce_ in her explanation that, no, it’s not at all the same as what they experienced with the CIA.

‘No, you don’t ‘got’ it, Jack,’ Mattie told him. ‘I don’t just mean disavowal for stepping outside jurisdiction, or getting mixed up in some international incident. I mean, unless their director has sent them to us _directly_ , and I have explicitly verified that they were, even the CIA should be expected to treat us as hostile entities. We will operate completely off of _every_ radar. _Totally_ dark.’

Jack’s always gotten the sense that this is for more than one reason. 

‘We do what the other agencies don’t have the bureaucratic anonymity to do,’ Mattie always says about the Phoenix, which maybe explains the super-limited, super-shady funding - the headquarters on the fourth floor of an actual tile manufacturing plant; the fact that none of them talk to anyone outside the Foundation in the government unless Mattie’s talked to them first.

But it doesn’t explain everything. 

It doesn’t explain Suspect 218.

It hasn’t for a while - but Jack assumed that Mattie didn’t “explicitly” say as much only because she trusted Jack to put two and two together himself.

Now that Mac might be one of the ‘two’, Jack doesn’t know what to think, or if he’s ever had any real idea of what ‘4‘ he should be calculating.

He steps off the freight elevator that services only the fourth floor of HQ, Riley two steps behind him, and starts asking before Mattie’s even fully appeared, coming out of the door at the end of the hall that leads to their one and only debriefing room.

And... after Mattie sternly redirects him into the debriefing room... Mattie starts answering.

“Yes, Jack," Mattie sits Jack and Riley down, looks Jack right in the eyes, and says, “I have long believed, as have a number of my colleagues - the colleagues who supported me in starting the Phoenix Foundation - that Suspect 218... as well as a number of other international criminals... have been operating with the conditional consent, if not the outright _protection_ , of a corrupt splinter group within an official American government agency.”

Jack doesn’t have to ask which official American government agency. This time, one of the bodies left in 218‘s wake had gear on it - and any shadowy criminal organization can get their hands on the kind of tac 218‘s goons always wear. Terrorist cells have gotten their hands on government issue ammo before, and they will again.

But no one on the planet uses the same tech, with the same security measures, that Jack saw in Rio. No one but the government agency with which Jack is most intimately acquainted.

“The CIA,” Jack says out loud. “You think the CIA is protecting 218.”

“I think a group _within_ the CIA is protecting him,” Mattie emphasizes.

“You think or you know?” asks Riley.

That gives Mattie pause.

Which is as much of a ‘yes’ as either Riley or Jack need.

“Fuck,” Jack says for the upteenth time today. Or is it tomorrow by now?

Mattie steps closer. Just one step closer towards Jack, but the look in her eyes catches Jack’s attention just as surely as if she’d grabbed him by the face.

“Jack... I swear to you,” she says, as serious as Jack’s ever seen her, “that I had no way of safely telling you my suspicions before today. But if I had _ever_ believed you to be in immediate danger? I would not have hesitated to blow this whole thing wide open. Oversight be damned.”

“Oversight?” Riley asks, before Jack can recover fast enough to do it himself.

“An incredibly influential former CIA agent,” Mattie explains, “who was given control of a CIA-funded black-ops splinter group that’s been operating out of Los Angeles for the past fifteen years.”

“That’s who you’ve been after this whole time,” Jack thinks out loud. _This_ is the math he’d assumed Mattie’s been trusting him to do on his own - but he’d never suspected that their former agency could be part of the equation. Or for everything to add up to something quite as big as this. “That’s why you started all this? To get to the guy pulling 218‘s strings... and probably all the others, am I right?”

“ _No one_ pulls 218‘s strings,” Mattie argues. “But I’ve suspected since almost as long as DXS has been active that Oversight’s been making deals with select targets rather than bringing them in. Covering their movements, so long as enough of them benefit CIA objectives.” Mattie looks more and more grim. “Even providing boots on the ground for the heaviest of his heavy hitters. But the ruined tech you brought home today is the closest thing to physical evidence that we’ve ever obtained.”

That’s.

A _lot_. It’s so much. Riley paces across the room, and Mattie takes a seat across from the couch Jack’s perched on. Jack-

Jack’s not sure he does anything, even breathe.

“Mattie...” Riley says, pacing back. “DXS is the name of the think tank that-”

Mattie looks grimmer still, and something else that makes Jack feel like whatever blood’s left in his face has drained to his boots along with his heart.

“I know,” she says, not making Riley voice the question hanging between them aloud. Riley doesn’t have to ask it - and Mattie doesn’t actually have to answer it. When she turns that look at Jack and says, “I’m so sorry, Jack.” That’s answer enough.

Angus Macgyver - Mac - is a twenty-seven-year-old MIT undergraduate who stopped pursuing some cushy, big-figure job - at probably any lab or firm or corporation in the country he might want to work for -to serve his country. When Jack was assigned as his overwatch over in Afghanistan, Jack thought Mac was the slowest EOD tech that had ever lived - because Mac cared so much for every single person that those bombs might hurt, he refused to make any easy guesses; to cut any time-demanding corners. _He wouldn’t even carry a gun_ back there, because he couldn’t stand the thought of killing anyone.

And now Mattie’s apologizing to Jack while they talk about a CIA-funded _pal program for psychopaths_ like that Mac... like _Jack’s_ Mac could be-

Jack sees a thousand impossible images flit past his mind’s eye as the impact of Mattie’s reaction settles in. Mac in the dark clothing Jack’s only ever glimpsed as a blur in too-distant camera footage, disappearing into a crowd from a rooftop or around a corner from too far away to make much sense of.

Jack pictures Mac screwing a silencer onto one of the guns that have taken off the heads of some of his victims, lying down beside the scope of the rifle 218 has used to assassinate dozens of people. Lighting fires. Slashing with knives. Smirking as he sent the cryptic messages 218 always sends his targets just before he hunts them.

Jack can’t look up from his feet as he does, but he has to ask. “Mattie, is Mac Suspect 218?”

“Jack, look at me.”

Jack has to work on his breathing for a moment. He can hear Riley’s, almost as loud, just before she sets a shaky hand on his shoulder, and he takes it blindly, gratefully.

Then he looks up.

“I truly don’t know how deep Mac’s involvement in the DXS’s illegal activities goes,” Mattie says carefully and firmly, “but I do _not_ believe that he is Suspect 218.”

It’s not much comfort, but it’s enough to get Jack breathing again.

“But you do think he knows about 218,” Riley says. “Jack was right. That was Mac’s voice on the sat phone?”

Mattie doesn’t bother tiptoeing around the truth again.

“It most likely was.”

Jack allows himself a moment more to feel like his world is ending. To cling to Riley’s hand and look probably about as hangdog as he feels. 

“Mattie, what am I gonna do?” he asks quietly, in a voice that barely sounds like his own.

Mattie almost looks like she’s doing the same. Then Jack watches her expression visibly clear. She rises and walks to his side and _does_ take his face in her hands this time. 

Riley puts her other hand on Mattie’s shoulder and they just stay there like that for the moment, like a family of three.

“Agent Dalton, you’re going to go find your husband...” Mattie says after the moment’s passed. “You’re going to bring him here,” she continues, looking up to include Riley, and Riley nods. “And we are _all_ going to figure this thing out.”

Jack lets out a shaky breath... and lets the steel in Mattie’s voice bring out the sterner stuff in himself.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says evenly.

Jill, their lab tech, started backtracing Mac’s phone as soon as Riley called back with what Jack had reported, Mattie says - and it went untraceable right at the edge of the city after traveling from DXS’s coordinates south.

In the direction of home.

So Jack and Riley check in with Jill to get new phones, and substitute tech for Riley until they can properly replace hers, and Jack goes home.


	3. Chapter 3

Jack and Mac didn’t always have what Jack would consider a just about perfect relationship. They didn’t have a traditional “meet cute” (although when he thinks back on it, Jack does remember the way Mac thought he’d won when he got Jack into that headlock as being pretty fricking adorable. And, also, super hot.)

Quite frankly? Mac and Jack hated each other.

Well.... Mac seemed to hate Jack. Jack was just annoyed as hell that this smarty pants kid, with the too pretty face and the hamburger name, was gonna be the one Jack had to keep alive for sixty-four days. It seemed like a tall order. The kid had apparently never heard the expression ‘the quick and the dead’ - or else he had way too little interest in not becoming the latter. He’d keep them out til dark some days, making sure they had _thoroughly_ cleared even the least prospective areas on their sweep - long after the other techs had checked the most likely hotspots in their own assignments and headed back to base.

Of course, it didn’t help that the day they’d met, Jack had caught Mac messing with Jack’s gear, and the ensuing altercation had led to a _literal_ knock down, drag out fight between the two of them. Jack had gotten in a few good licks of his own, even as he’d tried not to _really_ hurt the kid, but he was sore for days afterwards nonetheless.

The real problem, Jack came to realize by the time his sixty-four days were over, was not that Mac somehow knew how to forward assist a bolt carrier without ever carrying a rifle. It wasn’t that he didn’t back down when Jack got up in his face about it - even though his wide eyes told Jack, despite his stoic expression and ready fists, that he didn’t expect to win a fight with a man who was older and meaner and obviously had more military experience than him.

The problem wasn’t that Angus Macgyver seemed likely to get Jack killed before his last sixty-some days in Afghanistan were over. It was that _something_ about the man made Jack almost desperate not to watch _him_ get himself killed.

So desperate, by then, that Jack signed on for another tour just to keep watching over Mac. Then they stopped fighting so much, started to talk to each other rather than _at_ one another. They became friends... and then lovers, stealing moments when they could, where they could.

Jack called in a favor from a buddy who was supposed to hit the sand just as Jack and Mac were about to leave it, and in the bay of the freighter they were hitching their ride back in, Jack dropped to one knee - Afghani sand still swirling at his back - and asked Mac if he’d keep stealing moments with him once they were back in the States.   
‘Sargeant Dalton, are- Are you... asking me to marry you?’ Mac said, just standing there and staring down at him - looking as perplexed as Jack’s ever seen him.

‘Eventually,’ Jack told him, undeterred. One thing he’d learned about his man, in the time since he’d opened up to learning about him, was that Mac’s crazy quick coming up with impossible solutions to complex problems. Simple reactions to common problems, like... you know. People. Those Mac often needs a moment, sometimes a little nudging, to get a handle on. ‘I was thinking a long engagement. Enough time to make sure this thing is the real deal and not just, you know, circumstances. But eventually.’

Jack did feel conspicuous - and a little silly - the longer he knelt there, silver band in its velvet case perched there on his hand, looking kind of sad the longer Mac didn’t so much as look at it.

‘Okay, so. The others are gonna be here any second, and I’m kinda not looking to get shot down with an audience,’ Jack finally said into the silence, ‘so if I should just get up now, you gotta tell m-’

Mac interrupted him immediately. ‘Yes.’ No hesitation, no doubt in his voice at all.

Jack felt like the most foolish old fool who’d ever fooled himself in history. He was definitely glad that he hadn’t asked Mac this question around anyone else, then, but Mac laughed - a little puff of startled-sounding joy, and clarified, ‘I mean, _yes_ , Jack. Yes, I’ll marry you. Eventually, right now, whenever. Yes, of course.’

Jack’s response wasn’t as romantic and ideal as he’d pictured in his head, every time he’d pictured doing this.

‘Holy shit, seriously?’ he blurted out without thinking.

But Mac laughed again, longer this time, and it was about the best sound Jack had ever heard. And when the freighter crew showed up seconds later, as Jack rose up off of his knee, Mac kissed him - right there in front of everybody, audience be damned.

It was the most romantic moment of Jack’s life, for that kiss right there alone.

How’s he supposed to face the guy he shared it with - who he spent months protecting - who he’s adored every moment since... As maybe enemies?

Jack goes round and round the problem in his head, the whole way out to the ranch house, and after an attempt at talking about it (or two) Riley mostly leaves him to it. Jack still doesn’t have any idea by the time they’re pulling up into the front drive of his home.

He parks in the drive, and nothing looks different. Mac’s jeep isn’t here - it could be any other day that Jack’s come home unexpectedly early and Mac’s still at work.

The thought kind of gives Jack a chill now, though, knowing what “at work” really means for his husband.

It kind of pisses him off too.

“Jack. You _sure_ you don’t wanna take a minute and talk about this before-”

“Oh, I’m gonna talk,” Jack says, opening his car door. “I’m gonna have plenty to say. Just let me get my hands on a certain blonde-headed brainiac, you’ll see.”

“Jack-”

Jack all but storms into his house - half because he’s still so hurt and angry. Half because it simply hasn’t sunk in yet. What Mac having lied to him, what the things that Mac’s lied about, imply. Even knowing that he’ll be bringing Mac in once they find him, Jack doesn’t think to be cautious about opening his own goddamned door. He’s here to search for clues on where his _allegedly_ wayward husband may have gone - not to clear a drug den of dangerous criminals. Whatever fears Jack’s wrestled with since Rio, his heart apparently hasn’t begun to accept the fact that Mac might be someone Jack has to be afraid _of_ as much as for.

Jack steps right up onto his front step like it’s nothing. He reaches for the handle to his front door, and only when he hears, “Jack, wait!” does it occur to him that he should have done different.

Jack feels the impact before he hears the boom, and then he’s down.


	4. Chapter 4

A lot happened in Mac’s life immediately after he returned from Afghanistan. 

The father he hadn’t seen since he was twelve years old suddenly reappeared - and recruited Mac into his offshoot of the CIA. He offered Mac the chance to help take down the man who’s been hunting his father for years - the man who’s made it too dangerous for James Macgyver to live a normal life with his son.

Mac found out that his best friend since childhood had been recruited already, crafting disguises and camouflaging tech for the DXS. The first few missions Mac ran for his dad, he ran with Bozer by his side.

Mac helped capture terrorists, drug runners, and a cartel moneyman. He exposed a double agent, helped secure a foreign embassy, and located a network of international jewel thieves - all within the first few months of his recruitment to the agency. After the first year, his dad started putting him out in the field every once in a while - a mission in Ecuador, one in Serbia; even one that took him to the Bermuda Triangle.

But Mac’s happiest moments, throughout that whole damned time, came from the life he was making happen with Jack.

They roadtripped across the country soon as they got back to the States, the “kickoff tour” - Jack had called it - to the long engagement he’d asked Mac for in a truly Jack-esque marriage proposal just as they left Afghanistan.

They came back and bought a home, made it theirs. Spent long days together doing nothing and everything, before Jack had to answer the inquiries he’d been getting from security firms and contractors he’d spoken to about jobs. (Before Mac had to give his dad an actual answer.)

They worked out a routine once Mac started on at the “think tank”, and again when Jack worked his way through an outfit or two. And again when Jack said he’d decided he’d rather ‘not half-ass this thing and go full civie’ and take a position with a company with no military ties or history whatsoever.

If _only_ Mac could convince himself that that’s where things went wrong.

That Jack just fell into the wrong company, for whatever reason. That he meant well, but chose wrong, and now he’s just in over his head, working for the wrong people. Backing a bad guy maybe someone’s tricked him into believing is actually on their side. 

When a member of the tac unit Agent Thornton sent to Rio called in, and Mac answered his sat - and instead of Martin Grieger, Mac’s own husband spoke over the line... Mac was as afraid _for_ Jack, somehow right there in the line of fire between DXS’s own men and their target, as Mac was of whatever reason brought Jack to Rio. Even after he activated Grieger’s bodycam (all DXS tac agents wear them, set to record closed-circuit except when activated remotely by HQ - to avoid hacking) and saw Jack’s grim face staring back at him through one of Mac’s monitors...

The furthest thing from Mac’s mind was that his husband had just killed several DXS operatives shortly before. That Jack had apparently been spending his days doing something _other_ than selling bathroom tile - at least, that’s how he’d been spending that day - was as much as Mac figured. And Jack’s dayjob must have put him in the same path as the DXS, maybe even at odds with them or with 218.

In a panic, Mac had hit the remote self-destruct command on Grieger’s tech, but when Mac realized that if Jack had come upon a fallen DXS agent... he might just as easily come upon a living one, Mac called Jack’s cell. He called the “office” number Jack had given him - even Riley’s number, thinking that if Jack had recognized his voice and was refusing his calls, at least Riley could get the message to him that he needed to stand down, even if she wouldn’t understand it.

No one answered. Not once.

Mac tried calling his tac team instead, and - when his calls went inexplicably unanswered - activating their bodycams the way he had Grieger’s. But they’d all been disabled.

He’d stormed down to the war room and demanded that Thornton contact the tac unit and request that they submit their bodycam footage to HQ immediately. He’s worked with Patty for years - and he’d even come close to accusing her of keeping the footage from him, as an hour passed and nothing came through.

He took Bozer back to the command room with him and they scoured every byte of chatter to be scoured coming in and out of Rio, all the while Mac rehearsing to himself how he’d explain his involvement in everything when he broke it to Jack that, whoever he was in Rio with or whatever he was there for, he could be impeding a DXS mission.

As they waited to see if tac’s Exfil team at least would call in, Mac actually voiced suspicions aloud that _the tac team_ could be hiding something also, if only to Bozer.

‘Why would they do that, Mac?’ Bozer reasoned. 

‘Why would they disable their bodycams?’ Mac countered. ‘If the mission went that far off the rails, why didn’t they call in?’ When Mac told Thornton that the tac unit wasn’t answering their sat phones, she confirmed that the Exfil team had picked up _someone_ in Rio. 

How could Mac have guessed that tac simply hadn’t known how to tell their dispatch - their boss’s _boss _’s son - that his _husband_ was the one who’d done the rail-roading. __

____

____

How could he have known that they weren’t sure it was safe to reveal what they then knew. Patty had had to spell it out for Mac after she’d shown him the bodycam footage. Mac’s dad had had to dig up everything there was to dig out of the depths of Jack’s history, just to get Mac to take precautions like disabling his phone and following Bozer to a safehouse. 

__

__

Mac would give anything to believe that there’s some less damning explanation to all of it than Jack’s file, combined with the timeline DXS has managed to draw up of 218's movements over the years, suggest. 

He _can’t_ , of course. His deductive reasoning is too good for that, and his ego not inflated enough to get in the way. 

___“I’m just saying,” Bozer tries telling him anyhow. “Jack being in the same place, at the same time, as our bad guy, a few times-”_ _ _

“ _Every_ time, Bozer,” Mac says as blandly as he can. “Every time 218 pulled off a major hit during the last two years Jack was in the CIA, Jack was in the same general geographic location.” 

___“Yeah, Jack and probably lots of other agents,” Bozer keeps pressing. He was there for Mac back at HQ as just a silent, steady source of support - and he was there at Mac and Jack’s- at the house, in all but that one moment of being overwhelmed, as the voice Mac needed in his ear, keeping him moving._ _ _

___But now that they’re almost to the safehouse, Bozer has apparently decided to be the devil’s advocate. Mac appreciates it, as much as he can’t let himself take his best friend’s words to heart._ _ _

___They’re already there, honestly. But years of training, the loss of first his mother - and then, essentially, his father - and eventually his grandfather have taught Mac the importance of thinking with his head. In fact, it’s probably never been more important that Mac leave his heart out of the solution to a problem._ _ _

___His heart was Jack’s way into Mac’s life after all. Where he’s been helping the man responsible for breaking up Mac’s family, if not something so much worse._ _ _

___“And we’re not talking _every_ hit 218 pulled in all that time,” Bozer goes on. “You’ve said it before yourself. We’re lucky we know about the hits we do. If 218 were so easy to pin down we knew about every step he’s ever made, we’d have caught him by now. I bet he’s taken lots of jobs we don’t know about, that were nowhere _near_ Jack when he took them.”_ _ _

___Mac stares out of the passenger window of the DXS suv his dad put them in when he ordered Bozer to get Mac off campus and somewhere he could “examine what’s come to light” privately. (Dad-speak for 'get my son out of here before he causes some sort of scene.’)_ _ _

___“I guess,” Mac says._ _ _

___“I _know_ ,” Bozer doubles down._ _ _

___Mac’s learned to think with his head. That doesn’t mean he can’t feel the things his heart would rather he thought._ _ _

___“He lied to me, Boze,” Mac says, to himself as much as to Bozer. He looks back at his friend, but he doesn’t have to to know that the expression that crosses Bozer’s face at his words is there. “About his entire history with the CIA. And, yeah, I know. I lied too. But never before DXS. Nothing in his file matches up with what he told me about his life back then.”_ _ _

___“Maybe he lied about it for the same reason you lied about DXS,” Bozer suggests, not giving up. Not yet._ _ _

___Mac wants to laugh - or cry. Okay, mostly that second thing._ _ _

___But there’s no time for that now, like Mac told Bozer back at the house. They can’t slow down til they’re someone safe. And if Mac lets himself feel everything that’s happening right now, enough to let himself cry over it... That could bring him to a dead stop for a while._ _ _

___“Maybe,” Mac says quietly. “Or maybe he lied because he’s lied about _everything_ , right from the beginning.”_ _ _

___It would make a sick sort of sense. A lot more sense than Mac sees, looking back, in Jack just _happening_ to end up having been involved in Mac’s and Mac’s dad’s hunt for Suspect 218, for all this time._ _ _

___More sense maybe than it had made back in Afghanistan, when Jack had suddenly gone from bragging, at every opportunity, how he’d be going home in just sixty-four days... forty-two... twenty-three... To spontaneously announcing that he’d signed on for another full tour. With the condition that he be assigned to Mac the whole time._ _ _

___More sense than a marriage proposal on a military installation? From the kind of man’s man who fights first, asks what you’re doing with his bolt carrier later. Who complained about how slow, how “nerdy”, how annoying Mac was for the first full month of their acquaintance-_ _ _

___Bozer doesn’t comment on Mac’s supposition right away, focused on making their next exit through a small uptick in traffic. But the way Mac’s breathing must give him away - when he looks at Mac, he looks straight to the fists Mac has balled in his lap. He can’t miss the way they’re shaking._ _ _

___“Wait... You don’t think-”_ _ _

“He _hated_ me, man,” Mac says, voice breaking at last. Jack hated Mac when they first met. He never said as much, but Mac knew it. He even understood it. Mac gets tunnel-vision sometimes, when he sees a problem that needs fixing. He misses social cues or misreads them all the time, and he’s awkward about making amends when he does, so he rarely tries when his amends seem unwelcomed. 

___He just considered himself lucky when Jack seemed to have seen through that unfortunate first meeting. When he gave Mac a chance and got to know him better, but what if all of that had just been part of a plan? What if Mac never had a chance at all?_ _ _

___Mac makes himself look at Bozer - makes himself look for confirmation on his friend’s face that his fear is founded._ _ _

___And it’s a good thing he does-_ _ _

___Because then he sees the little red light at the the end of a rifle scope slowly tracing a very specific path along the dashboard of the suv, towards its driver._ _ _

___“ _No_ ,” Mac has just enough time to say. “Bozer-”_ _ _

___His body’s reacting in the meantime, lunging for the steering wheel. He jerks it sharply, and the shot - when it comes - thud-pings somewhere into the vehicle. It doesn’t explode into Mac’s best friend._ _ _

___But that’s just the start of their worries, because with a screech of tires, a cacophony of horns, and the rending sound of metal, the suv careens across traffic..._ _ _

___And towards a spectacular crash._ _ _


	5. Chapter 5

Jack can more or less lose himself in the chaos that follows the explosion - at least for a time.

The Hendersons from next door call 9-1-1 before Jack or Riley can call Mattie, so they each find themselves giving three separate statements - one to the first responders who show up on behalf of the city; one to a member of the LAPD bomb squad at the responding officer’s request; one to the bomb expert Mattie sends in, knowing considerably more about the “dangerous leak” that caused Jack’s front steps to go kaboom than anyone outside of the Phoenix Foundation is allowed to.

“And you had the phone on you that Mr. Macgyver would call if he wanted to contact you?” the agent asks, then sees the look on Jack’s face and clarifies before Jack can snap at him again - this time for repeating himself. “I know you said you haven’t been in contact. But if he wanted to contact you - at any time - is that the phone he’d call or text?” The agent nods to Jack’s cellphone, clutched tight in Jack’s fist.

It’s not the agent’s fault, Jack knows, that Jack feels so ornery at each and every question he’s been asked so far. Repeatedly... And by three different people now. 

Jack will feel real bad about it later - but at the moment, all he can feel is the fire in his blood, smoldering alongside the sooty edges of what had been the front door to his home.

And the way Mattie’s guy keeps saying ‘Mr. Macgyver’... Not the name that’s on Jack’s marriage certificate- Yeah. Jack feels that too.

“Yeah,” he says shortly. “ _So_?”

Riley has to jump in and add, “It’s the number he’d call. Our phones got trashed. They’re... actually at the bottom of a canal in Rio. We got new phones, new SIMS, but it’s the same number.”

Agent So-and-So actually looks _disappointed_ about that, for some reason, which Jack doesn’t draw any connections from until the man himself spells it out for Jack, casual as anything.

“Well, that rules out some sort of GPS signal scanner,” he says almost to himself.

“GPS?” Jack asks.

“Some of the device survived the explosion,” the agent explains. “From what I can tell, it wasn’t triggered remotely, but there’s no pressure plate, no trip line, no motion detectors...”

Jack gets it. He just can’t find the moisture in his throat to say so. He can only watch Riley’s pale, soot-streaked face in his peripheral - how it twists like maybe she feels sick.

“You’re trying to figure out how M-,” she stutters in a voice too calm. Too quiet “-how he set the bomb to go off when it did.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it," says the agent, “and Mattie told me our suspect has EOD training.” 

‘Our suspect,' he says - like he’s not talking about someone that both Jack and Riley have cared about. Someone they _love_.

Someone who may have just tried to _kill_ Jack and would have succeeded - if Riley hadn’t noticed a pattern in the way Jack’s porchlight had been blinking in broad daylight. (She’d noticed because _Mac_ taught her, once, what the pattern means.)

Did Mattie not tell this guy who Mac is to them?

Riley’s already gripping Jack’s arm, trying to talk him down when Jack finds himself standing, right up in that agent’s face.

“ _Our suspect_?” Jack parrots, “He’s got a name, buddy. And it’s not _Macgyver_. It’s Macgyver- _Dalton_ , alright? Don’t go assuming things you don’t know nothing about.” 

“Jack-”

“We don’t know-” Jack starts, before he remembers that this is _exactly_ why he didn’t want to talk about this with Riley - with someone who, like Mac, can always see through Jack’s bullshit and doesn’t hesitate to call him on it. (Not when it’s Mac Jack might be bullshitting himself about right now.)

Jack faces Riley a bit terrified of what he might see in her eyes. “We don’t know why Mac is doing any of this, right? Mattie said so herself. We don’t _know_. This could all just be some- Some _epic_ misunderstanding...”

“I think you could be right, Jack,” Jack is happy to hear said.

But it’s not Riley who says it.

Mattie’s come from up the drive. “At least, you’ve definitely misunderstood one thing,” she continues. “Whoever planted that bomb, I do believe that Macgyver was behind all of this. And I’m now certain that he intends to kill you.”

Jack feels like he’s just weathered his second explosion of the day. But as Mattie nears, she clarifies, mending the wound her words have caused before it can bleed.

“But I’m not talking about Angus Macgyver-Dalton,” she says. “I’m talking about _James_ Macgyver.” And when Jack and Riley only stare at one another, and then at her - before they can ask the questions their perplexed faces are asking just as well for them - she adds, softly, “I’m not talking about Mac, Jack.” 

“ _James_ Macgyver?” Jack finally says. “Who the hell is _that_?”

Mattie sighs. But with a meaningful glance in their bomb expert’s direction, she dismisses the man. And then, with voice lowered and eyes somber, she tells them, “James Macgyver is the agent I told you about. The one we refer to only as Oversight. Oversight is Mac’s father.”

 

“So this is what you meant when you said it wasn’t safe to tell me about DXS,” Jack guesses after Mattie’s told the story of how Oversight’s activities - Mac’s _father_ ’s activities - inspired her creation of the Phoenix Foundation.

"I didn't know how much your husband might know about his father, or even about the company he works for," Mattie says. "And I still don't. I told you the truth about that, Jack. I don't believe that more than maybe a fourth of James's operation know about what he's doing with cases like 218 - _if_ that. It's one of the reasons he's been so difficult to expose."

Mattie told Jack and Riley how she used to work with James - had considered him a friend. She'd even requested a transfer into his operation. When new evidence had surfaced in connection to the death of James's former partner - an operative who had turned on the CIA, and died during an attempted extraction - Mattie had joined the task force investigating the lead.

She'd thought her efforts would get her recognized - and they did, but not in the way she'd anticipated.

James had promptly denied her request. 

The task force Mattie had joined was summarily disbanded.

"I had had no way of anticipating any of this," Mattie said, an old hurt obvious in her voice and in her eyes. Jack's rarely seen her so emotive. "James was a good man once. An amazing operative... He saved my life more times than I can count."

"And you figured, 'like father, like son', right?" Jack asks, not even the least bit defiant. How can he be? With the smoking ruin of his front step still smoldering in the near distance?

"At best, I worried that Mac knew nothing about his father's less than savory actions via the DXS," Mattie explains. And her reasoning makes sense. According to what Mac's told Jack, Mac hasn't even seen his father since he was twelve years old - has no idea where he's been.

"I feared that alerting him might put Mac in danger," Mattie adds, "should he choose to confront James."

"Were you really worried that James might hurt Mac if he knew Mac had found out the truth?" is Riley's perspective on the matter, voicing a horror that Jack almost wishes he could share. "His own son?"

Mattie speaks Jack's own thoughts. 

"In the counter-intelligence world, Riley," she says grimly, "I've met good agents who would do worse to protect their interests."

"Yeah, speaking of that..." Jack works up the nerve to ask. "You said 'at best'. I'm assuming your 'at worst' involved Mac knowing _exactly_ what his old man's got going on the side... and doing something like that if we asked him about it." Jack gestures to the police tape criss-crossed around the pillars supporting the overhang at the front of Jack's house.

"I was afraid it was a possibility," Mattie admits, somewhat apologetically, as if that were in any way her fault.

But that’s not the sorry thing Jack’s focusing on at this moment.

"And what about you?" he asks, with as neutral a tone - and gaze - as he can manage.

Maybe he fails, because even Riley goes very still, looks up at Jack as he speaks, and does a double-take when her eyes meet his.

“Is all this why you looked me up in the first place?” Jack has to ask. “What, did you find out I’d married into Oversight’s family and decide you ought snatch me up before he did, huh?”

“Jack-”

“Once I’d got a ‘-Macgyver’ slapped onto the back of my name, I must have become plenty relevant to your _interests_ ,” Jack lays out the facts, even as Riley shakes her head at him from behind Mattie, in concern and alarm.

To be honest... Mattie’s response? May be the one time Mattie’s ever laid out a set of her own facts for Jack that he’s been truly, un-ironically thankful for it.

“Okay, Jack. I’m going to say this one time, and one time only,” Mattie begins firmly, if not unkindly. “Oversight would never have ‘snatched you up’, Jack. And you know why?”

Jack steels himself, but Mattie just looks him in the eyes and says, with every bit of sincerity he’s ever heard from her, “Because any agent who’s ever so much as met you... knows that you would never compromise yourself the way Oversight has become compromised. You’re too good an agent for that, and too good a person.”

And while Jack tries to process that - a compliment that strong, from Mathilda ‘Mattie the Hun’ Weber - she continues: “And, second - if I had ever seen an angle to be played by taking you on, Jack, I would have discussed it with you in the beginning - whatever the risk. Because whether we capture criminals or coddle them isn’t the only difference between me and Oversight.”

“I don’t play with my people that way,” Mattie tells Jack and Riley both, looking from one to the other. “I never have. After I realized what James Macgyver has become... I vowed to myself that I never will.”

Jack hadn’t realized how badly he’s needed to hear that - words so encouraging. So steady. In the middle of having pretty much the rest of his life shaken at the very foundation...

Because Mattie’s encouragement isn’t the only thing that Jack’s needed to hear.

What if Riley had been the one to walk into the house first? Jack might not have seen that thing with the lights - he hadn’t seen it when it was him doing the walking.

When Mattie sent him and Riley to his home, Jack knew that he and Riley would be taking Mac back to HQ with them if they found him. He hadn’t necessarily expected for Mac to be cool with that... But whatever Jack had expected to come from their negotiation of those facts, it hadn’t been for Mac to try and _kill_ him before Jack could even lay eyes on him. 

He hadn’t expected it because he hadn’t _let_ himself expect it. 

He’d taken Mattie’s word that Mac isn’t 218 - that 218 isn’t Mac - because he’d _wanted_ her to be right. He’d still wanted that pipe dream he’d clung to on the plane back from Rio - that Mac couldn’t possibly have been living a double life. That all Jack had to do was just get home to him, and everything would be okay. Everything would be back to normal. Everything would be just as it had been when Jack last left his home.

How things had been the last time Jack left his home was Mac had most likely been lying to Jack about his job... about his family. About his friends.

Mac’s _dad_ is his boss. The guy Mac said he hadn’t even seen since he was a kid. Mac’s been going to work for him every day. His best friend’s worked at DXS for even longer.

What Jack _wants_ couldn’t be further from what he _needs_ to anticipate, from here on out. If Mattie’s told him anything today, she’s told him that.

Because if ‘like father, like son’ really does apply to Jack’s husband... If Angus likes ‘playing with people’ as much as his dad- If he’s just been playing with Jack, for god knows how long...

Jack’s gonna have to find a way to prepare himself for that. 

And he’s gonna have to find it fast.

The one thing Mac definitely hasn’t lied about or hidden from Jack for all these years... is how wicked smart he is. 

If there’s even a chance that he’d set that big brain against Jack, Jack’s going to need all the preparation he can get.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bozer's and Riley's POVs. Hope this all makes at least a kind of sense :p This is a more difficult AU to work within than I had anticipated! Please bear with me :p
> 
> (Also, I got several comments on how cruel it is that Mac thinks Jack's been playing him all this time... I thought it only fair to even things out a it ;)

Things go a little... fuzzy between the moment Mac grabs the wheel and the moment the suv finally skids to a stop... on its roof, on the other side of _three_ lanes of traffic from the one that they’d been in, on the shoulder and against the sloped underbelly of an overpass.

Go figure, right?

More than fuzzy. They go dark at least twice... at least for Wilt. They’re swerving, then tipping - then something’s crashing into them, from behind and beside them, and there’s so much noise-

Then the whole world’s spinning. _Literally_ spinning. A similar but different clamor of noises is drowning out every other word that he hears Mac shouting above it all - to hold on, that it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be al-

It’s quiet, for a moment, when Wilt comes to. At least, Wilt can’t hear anything. Then he hears a heartbeat.

 _His_ heartbeat. Then, as if a freeway is capable of sneaking up on a person, the sounds of a freeway slowly fade back in around Wilt, as if arriving gradually from a distance. Wilt’s forehead is sticky, and Mac’s sitting on the interior of the roof of the suv.

Wilt thinks, brain all woozy, that he ought to tell Mac to be careful. There’s shattered pellets of glass strewn over the roof, concentrated in places in piles so thick that if Wilt squinted his eyes til things went blurry, they’d probably look like mounds of snow. If Mac doesn’t move very carefully, he could get cut.

That’s when Wilt realizes that Mac is already telling _him_ something.

“-over before he changes position,” Mac’s just said.

Wilt has _no_ idea what the hell he’s talking about. But he’d heard Mac say something about Jack, and he scrunches up his face. Wilt doesn’t need his best friend to tell him _anything_ about his dude’s husband, or any sort of _positions_ of any kind. Wilt knows entirely too much about Mac and Jack’s sexlife already, thanks to how sloppy stinkin’ _drunk_ Mac got during his bachelor party, and how he overshared on the ride Wilt took with him back to their hotel. (Wilt had to apologize to a bartender, a cabbie, two clubgoers, and the hotel concierge that night. And listen while Mac apologized to each of them as well - for taking his “sexy sergeant” - Wilt had to hear those words come out of Mac’s mouth with his own two ears - off the market before they’d known that he exists.)

But on the other hand-

Jack...

It all comes back to Wilt with the force of a- Well, of a car crash.

“Bozer, we have to _move_!” Mac is shouting now, almost pleading with Wilt.

“Okay... okay,” Wilt says in a raspy voice, fumbling for the latch of his seat belt. 

“Bozer, don’t-” Mac cautions him too late.

“ _Ow_!” 

Wilt doesn’t exactly get out of his now upside-down seat gracefully, even with the suv’s steering column blocking his descent.

But that’s the least of his worries, because now Wilt can see why Mac is just sitting there - trying to talk Wilt out of his stupor - instead of helping him ease out of the driver’s seat and into consciousness himself.

Mac’s left arm hangs limply along his side, at a wrong angle, and he’s cradling it in his lap with his right.

“Mac! What’s-”

“I’ve got a dislocated shoulder,” he answers before Wilt can actually ask. There’s blood smeared across his chin and a cut probably somewhere just along the left side of his hairline, because there’s a trickle of blood there, but not much of one.

He’s pale beneath all that, eyes a little wide and a little glassy - with pain, probably - and as tense as Wilt’s ever seen him. “I need you to help me out of the car,” Mac says, “and help me pop it back it in.”

Wilt feels an instant wave of nauseousness sweep over him. Delayed reaction from the crash? Or just a natural reaction to the thought of _relocating Mac’s shoulder on the fly_. Sweet Jesus.

“Oh, god,” he says, but he scrambles to do as Mac says. If there’s one thing Wilt’s learned since joining Mac’s dad - and then Mac - in the super secret world of spies, it’s that ‘questions can get you killed’ really is true in a variety of ways.

Mac barely makes a sound as Wilt crawls around and over him to get himself out of the suv before figuring out the best way to get Mac out - but when there seems to be no way to do that other than to have Mac double over and twist in a way that Mac’s dislocated shoulder doesn’t appreciate, he screams.

Wilt blinks and blinks again to control his calm. 

If he never, ever hears Mac scream in pain like that again, it will still have been too soon.

Wilt gives Mac a moment and then, when Mac nods and starts to breathe less like he’s silently still screaming, Wilt helps Mac to his feet.

They haven’t even gotten through the worst part yet. 

Mac directs Wilt in how to properly _relocate_ a dislocated shoulder in an emergency, and Wilt does it, wincing with eye-watering sympathy as Mac screams again and staggers. Wilt hugs him and holds him up, shakily speaking words of comfort and encouragement in Mac’s ear until Mac seems capable of standing on his own again.

In the meantime, Wilt looks around them at the chaos they’ve ended up at the edge of.

Everything around them is just about as much of a mess as the suv has become. Wilt counts six... seven vehicles that rest along the path the suv took when Wilt lost control of it. Four have crashed - either into one another or along the shoulder, into a guardrail - two lay on their sides; one, like the suv, lies upside down. Wilt can’t tell from here which of the passengers have been injured or how badly, but traffic is backed up along all of the lanes on this side of the median. People are out of their cars, some gathered around the crashed vehicles presumably to render aid. A crowd has gathered along the footpath that lines the overpass.

“We have... to get out of here,” Mac says, around the heavy breaths he’s taking as he manages his pain. “Jack... could already be... headed this way...”

Wilt probably shouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point, but he legitimately is.

“Dude...” he says, “I know we’ve decided that Jack’s mixed up in some bad stuff...”

Mac decided, mostly - and Wilt trusts Mac when it comes to important stuff even more than he trusts his own self, especially when it comes to important spy stuff. 

But everything that’s happening right now between Mac and Jack is _crazy_. Craaaazy. Wilt knows that things look bad - that video... Mac’s dad’s files- And since coming to work for the DXS, Wilt’s seen some crazy shit; he’s seen some people do some crazy or fucked up things.

But he’s never seen anybody - _anybody_ \- pull the kind of James Bond, sleeper cell type of shit Mac’s dad and Director Thornton’s got Mac thinking that Jack’s pulled.

“I know the thing on the video looks bad,” Wilt says out loud. But videos can be tampered with right? Files are just- They’re just paper.

And, yeah, Wilt trusts Mac’s dad and Patti also. But a lot of those crazy or fucked up things Wilt’s seen spies do over the years? Thornton and Big Mac were the spies who did them. And Wilt doesn’t even see all that much that happens at the DXS - he doesn’t work mission control like Mac does, and before Mac started occasionally going out into the field himself, Wilt rarely even left his lab.

He’s never seen Mac’s dad or Director Thornton as anything _but_ spies. Mac’s dad won’t even be _seen_ with Mac outside of the DXS - because of Suspect 218 gunning for him and everything.

Wilt’s seen Jack as... as just _Jack_. He’s known him for years now; known him when he’s with Mac. Wilt’s seen the way Jack looks at Wilt’s best friend, especially when he couldn’t have known that anybody would see him.

If all that’s been an act... Jack is too creepy-good at the spy thing to be _real_ , Wilt would swear it.

“But do you really think Jack did _this_ ,” Wilt asks, probably sounding a little hysterical as he acknowledges how much ‘this’ pertains to. Looking around them, they look like they’re in a scene out of a movie about a natural disaster or something.

He also probably sounds like a broken record. He’s been saying the same things since all this started. 

Mac’s drug Wilt over to stand with him beside their trashed suv in a way that he must think will shield them from the most likely locations a sniper might move to to try to shoot at them again while he figures out the safest way for them to get out of here.

That look Wilt’s used to seeing in Mac’s eyes while he’s figuring out how to build a record player using a cake mixer... or barricade a door against bad guys using ethernet cable - it fades just enough, for a moment, that Wilt can see a sort of calm settling in that he hasn’t seen since Mac first realized that Jack was in Rio.

He’d _thought_ that it would be a good thing once he did. That seeing a little certainty in Mac’s eyes would mean seeing less of that bone-deep hurt Wilt’s been watching him struggle with. 

Oh, man, had he been wrong... Because what Mac’s certain of obviously doesn’t hurt him any less.

“Jack was _my_ sniper back in Afghanistan,” Mac says, and maybe it isn’t _calm_ , what’s settled into him now. It’s _numb_. “I’ve watched him draw a bead on a target hundreds- _thousands_ of times, Bozer. That was him back there.”

What can Wilt possibly say to that?

“Jesus, Mac...”

He finds himself asking even though he isn’t certain he actually wants to know the answer: “Is Jack really that good?” 

They’d been driving at full speed in heavy traffic... And as Mac had reached for the wheel, Wilt had seen it - the laser point of a rifle inching towards him. It had barely wavered.

Mac looks at Wilt with that numbness in his eyes and says, “He’s the best there is.”

And Mac’s certainty about _that_ is terrifying. 

 

|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|

 

After Mattie’s finished filling them in on a few of the relevant, _rather important_ , details she still hadn’t been ready to share with them when they talked about DXS’s true nature before, Jack heads back towards his house, and Riley heads in right after him.

A part of her wishes she couldn’t.

That Jack would insist that she “go on home now. Get your mom and get somewhere safe” like he has a couple of times before, when Phoenix business had looked like it might follow them home. 

As much as she would hate that - would refuse to leave him - the part of Riley that’s just never stopped being a scared little girl, at least around Jack (around the one person who makes Riley feel like she _can_... and still be safe, without being a burden) that part of Riley wants the option. To know that it’s available. To know that Jack isn’t so hurt right now, so scared himself, that he _can’t_ send her away. Can’t do this on his own...

Nothing on this _earth_ could make Riley leave Jack to deal with something like this on his own. 

But the possibility that he _is_ that hurt... That, at a time like this, _Jack_ could need _her_ so much...

It’s a lot.

It’s a lot for Riley to wrap her head around.

Even before she had known that Jack was some sort of... some sort of secret superhero (oh, she would _not_ live that down if Jack ever knew that she kind of thinks of him that way) Jack Dalton had seemed larger than life to Riley. Even immediately after he’d come back into her life as Jack Dalton _-Macgyver_ (armed with just about the best reason ever for not having tried harder to make things work with her mom) and Riley was just so frickin’ mad at him... Jack was the one person Riley knew she could go to, now that he was back around, if things just didn’t seem to make sense.

Now they’re stepping through a _hole_ where Jack and Mac’s front door used to be... into a house Jack’s shared with the man who may have put that hole there for the past _three years_.

Nothing feels like it makes sense. And all Jack can do about it is sift through the clues Mac’s left them as Riley trails along helplessly. She knows Mac and Jack’s home... She’s hung out here plenty, with Jack and Mac and Bozer-

But there’s only so much she can make of the things that seem to catch Jack’s eye as they walk around his house. 

The mantle in the living room - Riley sees what catches Jack’s notice about that. There used to be an old clock sitting on it, that Riley thinks she remembers Mac saying used to be his grandfather’s... And there _didn’t_ used to be a hollowed out space right below it - the panel that had hid it lying nearby on the floor.

“Is that a... secret compartment in your fireplace?” Riley asks.

“Bolthole,” Jack says way too calmly. “A place to stash i.d.s, backup, stuff like that. Most spies have them around their home.”

Riley knows that much. She’d helped Jack cut his into his walls and then plaster and paint back over them. (“These are strictly for dire emergencies only,” Jack said. “So this’ll work. Anywhere else, and Mac’ll find ‘em just tinkering with something.”) Mac had gone with Bozer back to their hometown, to see Bozer’s folks, and Jack had stayed behind because he couldn’t “get time off from work.” (There was this thing in Lithuania they already knew they’d be doing over the weekend.)

“Did you know-”

“No,” Jack answers simply. “No, I didn’t.”

But Riley bets that whatever’s going through Jack’s head at this moment is anything but simple. She can tell in the quiet way he passes by each of the other empty hidden compartments they find around the house, the way he pauses next to things Riley sees no difference in but must be missing something of some kind for Jack to look at it that way.

She’d wanted Jack to talk to her before - had thought it would do him good. But she doesn’t try to interrupt whatever’s happening in Jack’s twisty, Jack-like mind just now. Not while they’re still looking for something that might tell them more than Mattie already has (or - Riley will admit it, at least in her head - something to _contradict_ what Mattie has already told them.)

They clear most of the house (including the _trap door_ exit in Jack’s kitchen that Jack had never thought to look for before, its hatch notched seamlessly into the travertine tiles Riley remembers Jack had bitched about back when Mac had picked them for their kitchen renovation.)

Then Jack walks into his bedroom.

There is no place in the world Riley wants to follow Jack _less_ than into his bedroom (Riley will always love her dad - Elwood is very important to her. But in a lot of ways, Jack is more of a dad to her than anyone else has ever been. So much so that Riley’s never been able to joke around with Mac about things like dating and sex, even though Mac and she are about the same age and became fast friends. She even refers to Mac like he’s her stepdad to his face, although she does it - mostly - like she’s joking.)

But Jack goes, and the way he freezes just inside the door, Riley can no more leave him to it now than she had before.

At first, Riley thinks Jack’s staring at the bed - which is made but rumpled - and, wow, _awkward_. But she’s not sure what he’s actually staring at isn’t worse, once she walks inside and sees that it’s the desk that sits across from the bed, in front of the bedroom window. 

Especially after Jack starts to talk.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen this thing not covered in... in junk. Tools and ‘projects’... and things Mac’s taken apart just because,” he says softly, and fuck.

Riley’s (mostly) been trying not to think about how _sad_ all of this is, besides being scary. Mac and she aren’t _just_ friends, after all this time. She isn’t _just_ joking when she calls him shit like ‘dad’, to see him get all shy and awkward. He’s family. He’s a good guy. The thought that he could be mixed up with people who aren’t at _all_ good- 

Not thinking about it has kept Riley more or less functioning and thinking through everything that’s happened so far, but hearing that awful, _resigned_ note in Jack’s voice- Seeing him still so damned calm since Mattie dropped the bomb about Mac’s dad...

Riley has to swallow, and swallow again, to breathe past the lump in her throat looking at the absolutely bare desk Jack is talking about, its open drawers left empty.

“He’s always tinkering at it, anytime he’s got a spare moment,” Jack’s saying. “Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, and he’ll be sitting there - brain buzzing with whatever he’s been working on, even though he’s still half asleep. Sometimes he’ll have passed back out, and I’ll have to coax him back to bed so he don’t wake up with a crick in his neck and, like, little imprints in his face the next morning, of whatever’s lying on top of his desk that he fell asleep on top of.”

Even through that awful, unnatural calm, Riley can hear the abject fondness in Jack’s voice, and it just-

“Jack,” she chokes out.

And the desk’s not even the worst of it. After Jack tears himself away from that, he turns to his and Mac’s closet. Which has been cleared out of all of Mac’s things as well. And in front of it, the carpet is stained - deep and dark - with blood.

Jack drops down onto the edge of the bed and stares at it.

Like they’re telepathic or something, Riley knows _exactly_ what he’s thinking.

Beside Mac and Jack’s closet door is the door to the bathroom, and through it Riley and Jack can see that the bathroom counter is covered in bandages and towels, the towels as stained up as the carpet.

If Mac _had_ been in Rio when Jack heard him over that sat phone... and he’d hitched a ride home with his dad’s men but hadn’t stuck around the DXS headquarters long, and he’d had an injury when he rushed home to grab his things-

The kind of injury that might have been dressed hastily in the midst of fleeing a foreign country - like a bullet wound such as the one Jack might have given 218, although he’d thought he’d only grazed him...

“You heard Mattie back at HQ, Jack,” Riley says with all of the confidence she has in her. “That wasn’t Mac. Whatever Mac’s mixed up in, with his dad... Whoever rigged that door, Mac’s not _that_.”

“Mattie may know almost everything,” Jack only says, “but she isn’t right about everything.”

“She’s right about this!” Riley says, needing Jack to agree with her. To sound as determined not to jump to conclusions as he’d sounded with that bomb tech earlier. 

Because she _knows_ that Jack doesn’t want to do that. Just something about finding out about Mac’s dad has rattled him, like nothing else has so far. And if Jack does need her, what he needs most is for her to remind him of why he was so determined not to even _speak_ with her about Mac being possibly in the wrong before.

“Mac wouldn’t _knowingly_ hurt people," Riley says. Jack knows that better than anyone - knows _Mac_ better than anyone. “He wouldn’t hurt _you_!”

“It would sorta make sense wouldn’t it?” Jack says, which makes anything _but_ to Riley at first.

 _Nothing_ that’s happened since Brazil has made _any_ kind of sense whatsoever.

Then she sees that little smile on Jack’s face... The kind of smile that he pastes on when he wants to do something entirely different. And Riley thinks, ‘Oh, shit.’

“No, it wouldn’t, Jack,” she says carefully, knowing that _this_ \- this isn’t going to help. But not completely sure what to do about it. It’s been a long time since Jack’s gotten _that_ specific look in his eye. Since right after Jack came back into Riley’s life, in fact - and they first started talking to one another for real.

Jack’s smile abruptly vanishes. “ _You_ heard Mattie, Riley,” he says back to her. “Just now. Oversight is Mac’s _dad_! As in, the man Mac said went M.I.A. like twenty years ago. Mac goes to work with him _every day_. And you know who else does? _Bozer_. Mac’s best friend. Has since before me and Mac came back to the States.” 

“Mattie was right about one thing,” Jack continues. “The best case scenario here? Was that Mac didn’t know what DXS has going on... But what’re the odds of that, Riley? If his whole frickin’ _family’s_ worked there since this started?”

Riley shakes her head. She doesn’t know, is the thing. But she knows they’re not good.

Still-

“We don’t know why Oversight started playing nice with the bad guys in the first place," Jack goes on, “but it’d make a hell of a lot more sense that his kid would be one of them than that somebody’s managed to pull the wool over on a guy as smart as _Mac_ for all this time.”

“You believe that?” Riley demands, unable to keep her voice down or even when there’s really nothing else that she can say. Nothing else she’s wanted to say all day, if Jack would have just given her the chance. Maybe he even would have listened. Before. “You believe that about _Mac_? That he could be a bad guy like 218? Because I _don’t_!”

“I believed that a guy like Mac could love an ornery old knuckledragger like me,” Jack says as quietly as before. He says it plainly, and clearly, but he couldn’t hurt Riley’s heart any more if his voice broke as he said it. “Honey, what I _believe_ doesn’t seem to be carrying too much weight these days.”

“What I know,” Jack says, “is that Mac planted that bomb out there. Maybe there are other dudes out there who could make one just as deadly, just as difficult to piece back together... But nobody who’s got a reason to bother coming after me could have made one that precise. In such a short amount of time...” 

“That was Mac, Riles. No one’s seen him handle more explosives, knows how he works with ‘em, better than me. He might just as well have _signed_ this one. And if I ignore that... just because I want to believe that he would never do such a thing to me-”

Okay, Riley was wrong. It _could_ hurt more if Jack’s voice broke... as it just has.

“Jack...”

“I’m going to end up getting us both killed, sweetie,” Jack finally says with some actual emotion, the creepy calm of before shattering away like it was nothing. And Jack _is_ hurt. He _is_ scared. In fact, he looks terrified...

And Riley’s never been more glad that the part of her that _isn’t_ a silly, scared little girl inside can be here for Jack when he needs her to be. 

Even if she’s just gonna have to guess blindly as to how to do it.

|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|

 

Across town, having reached the safehouse on foot without incident, Wilt is struggling just as blindly. But with more panic.

Because while Jack has no idea what to do at this very moment... Mac seems to have talked himself into a very specific course of action.

Specifically, a very _stupid_ course of action.

A stupid and _unnecessary_ course of action. “Mac, dude, your dad _told_ you to just lay low while _he_ looks for Jack,” Wilt says.

“And when he finds him?” Mac immediately asks. He doesn’t even pause suiting up in the gear he still had tucked away at his house from that one time his dad let him go undercover out in the field. 

It’s just plain black pants and a black coat - nothing that would stand out as actual gear, but Mac’s got on the kevlar vest that came with them, between his t-shirt and the coat, as well as the leather gloves and black cap.

He’s cleaned the blood off of his face, but he still looks pale. With that and all the black clothing, he hardly looks like himself. Harsher. _Harder_. And sharper, Wilt thinks - like he’s all edges right now.

That’s what worries Wilt.

“Dad probably already knows about the crash,” Mac says. “If he and Jack go toe to toe, neither of them is going to be aiming to wound.”

And Mac may be right. Again, Wilt trusts Mac’s dad, and James said he’d bring Jack in to question...

But Wilt’s never really been able to peg whether or not _Mac_ actually trusts his dad, as much as Mac really - kind of _desperately_ \- wants to, and says that he does whenever James asks him.

“I just got my dad back,” Mac says. “I’m not losing him now.”

That James has the might of the DXS behind him and they have no idea who, if anyone, Jack has working with him goes without mention.

And other circumstances, Wilt would actually find that kind of comforting. That even after all that’s happened, all that Mac’s _said_ about Jack obviously being the bad guy here... and how dangerous he is - Mac’s still unable to just sit back and let someone, even his own dad, go after Jack.

But these are the circumstances: Mac thinks, and Wilt has no reason not to believe him, that Jack tried to _kill_ them both today. Mac’s said himself that anything and everything Jack’s ever told him, told either of them, could be a lie. For all they know, the tile factory where Jack claims to work could, yes, contain some clues as to how Jack usually spends his days. Or... it could contain about a dozen more bad guys just like him, each of them gunning for Mac’s head now that he’s stumbled upon Jack’s double life.

“And, what, you think he - you think _either of us_ want to lose you??” Wilt goes ahead and says it.

Mac’s dad might not aim to wound if he gets close to Jack, and even if Jack did take that shot today, Wilt doesn’t want that. He knows that Mac wouldn’t be able to _live_ with that. But Jack proved today that he is _definitely_ willing to aim to kill, and Wilt isn’t sure that Mac could bring himself to do either, nevermind the couple of handguns that Mac’s taken from the safehouse armory and stashed on himself.

Mac smirks. It’s grim for a smirk, but a smirk it definitely is.

It doesn’t really make Wilt feel less panicky.

Then Mac grabs the small, black duffle he all but emptied out almost as soon as they cleared the safehouse... and immediately started re-filling with things he’s found around the place.

“You’re not going to lose me, Boze,” Mac promises.

Wilt looks into his bag and spots scotch tape, some kitchen knives, a nine volt battery... rope and saran wrap before he remembers his personal rule to never actively try to anticipate what Mac’s going to improvise when he puts together the materials to improvise something. 

Anticipation never makes Mac’s plans less panic-inducing.


	7. Chapter 7

When the alarm comes in from HQ, Mattie tells Jack to hold on - to let her round up some reinforcements to head back there with him; to have Riley access their own systems and determine who all broke in and how. It’s not like the Phoenix Foundation is a huge operation - basically everyone is out in the field right now, doing recon on DXS or trying to piece together Mac’s recent movements. 

If Jack rushes back to meet whatever threat this break-in represents, he’ll find no one to help him do it on site besides their tiny team of lab techs, two guards, and the textile workers downstairs legitimately running Phoenix’s cover operation.

Too late. Jack’s already on his feet, having punched out a portion of his bedroom wall and retrieved the duffle bag full of essentials hidden within it. 

“Jack, we still don’t know any more about who at DXS, exactly, is involved in all of this, and what their agenda is in targeting you this way,” Mattie tells him - genuine urgency in her voice, not the artificial kind she uses a lot just because she gets impatient with people.

“Yeah, Jack. Just give me two minutes,” Riley joins in. She took off just as soon as Jack started laying into his bolthole, presumably to dig up the laptop she’s come back with. “At least let us check the security feeds to tell you who tripped the alarms.”

Jack doesn’t need either of them to even finish their sentence, though, to know everything he really needs to know going forward.

“We _know_ who tripped the alarms, Ri,” he says it simply, puffing a little - more in continued frustration with this whole, ugly mess than actual irritation with his girls, as they just stare at him. “ _DXS_! Whether it was Mac, or his daddy, or someone we don’t even know about... we know it was them. Don’t we? And nobody and nothin’s gonna tell us more about DXS’s _agenda_ than if we can get our hands on one of them.”

“Jack-” Mattie starts in, with that look in her eye, like she’s ready to fight him on this - a look Jack knows well. But at the same time, Riley’s saying, “ _There_! I got it. Looks like scanners picked up one intruder southwest of the perimeter before he did something to short them out.”

And then she’s calling up what she says is the only camera inside the building that caught a glimpse of someone who shouldn’t be there before all of those went off-line too.

Jack and Mattie are standing at either side of Riley while she sits at Mac’s- at the desk, clacking away at the keyboard. So they both see exactly what she sees as she sees it.

Riley’s rambling, in the middle of needlessly explaining how she’s accessing a feed that’s technically been made inaccessible - Jack can’t understand any of it - when the footage comes up, and she cuts off in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a word.

Mid- _syllable_ , even, with a little sound Jack doesn’t make himself but feels the echo of in his heart.

Before the bomb, before learning about Mac’s dad... even then, Jack feared the worst, deep down inside of himself where he’s never been able to stop expecting the worst for himself, no matter how well things have been going in his life these last few years. (How exceptionally, _fantastically_ \- apparently unrealistically - well.) He tried picturing Mac as the bad guy evidence has just been piling up to suggest him being.

And Jack might as well have pictured exactly what he sees on Riley’s computer screen.

Mac in all black - head to toe - face uncharacteristically grim, making his way carefully but confidently down one of Phoenix’s corridors. The way he moves could have been written in the CIA handbook. 

He’s definitely packing. Angus Macgyver - who Jack would have sworn both his thumbs on yesterday as staunchly refusing should anyone ever offer him a gun. Jack can tell even through the grainy footage on Riley’s screen.

Mattie doesn’t bother with any further reasoning. She knows all of Jack’s looks just as well.

“No, Jack,” she says firmly. “That’s an order.”

“Jack, listen,” Riley pleads, of the same mind if not in the same tone.

“Y’all really want to waste time giving me orders you know I’m just gonna break,” Jack says with absolutely no give in his own voice. Jack doesn’t often let the serious side of him run the whole show - he doesn’t like how it reminds him of who he used to be, back before Mac. He doesn’t like the way people look at him when they realize just how good he is at the things that side of himself takes most seriously. But he lets his serious side shine right now. If Mac’s dropped his act, it’s past time for Jack to lighten up on his. “Or you wanna help me get in there and get Mac out with both of us in one piece?”

That’s all this side of Jack has in him to hope for at this point - and even that may be asking for too much, he realizes.

“How exactly do you expect us to help you, Jack?” Mattie asks, “If you won’t stop a moment and _wait_ -”

Jack tells her.

 

|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|

 

Mac will be the first to admit it. He may have been hasty, suiting up and storming into Jack’s office-come-shady-organizational-headquarters without doing any in-depth recon on the place, or so much as calling in to let his dad know what he was planning.

It’s a little late after he’s breached the building’s perimeter, let himself into the building’s hyper-secure uppermost floor, and disabled all the security cameras found there to just back out.

He doesn’t get much for the trouble. Confirmation of a sort - in the high tech security systems he spots and shortcircuits or avoids. He can’t hack a computer like Agent Carpenter could, if Mac had invited the DXS along with him on this insane mission of his to-

To what? Find proof he already got in the form of a rifle scope, less than six hours ago? 

Mac spots a lab he tries to avoid, manned by personnel who are obviously not combatant and evades a couple of trained but nonetheless outmatched guards. He ends up, more or less by chance, in a non-descript looking office. Picking the lock on a cabinet that swings open to reveal enough firepower to equip an entire DXS tac team. He picks a lock on the desk in the office, and finally thinks maybe he’s found something useful when he grabs the iPad inside...

Then all the lights turn red. Metal shutters drop, covering all of the office’s external windows, and the interior glass walls of the office turn abruptly transparent, whereas they had been opaque the second before.

Mac drops, behind the desk he’s been examining, just as a voice drifts out from the speakers inset into the ceiling. A very familiar voice.

Jack’s voice... except for the hard edge to it, sugarcoated with the thinnest veneer of sweetness - like a mockery of the fond tone Mac’s used to hearing in relation to that voice.

“Hey, darlin’,” Jack says over the speakers. “‘d you come all the way down here just to see your hubby? That’s real nice.”

Mac-

Could honestly be sick. Right here, right now. There’s coming to slowly, reluctantly, believe that his husband is other than he’s seemed... And then there’s receiving that proof Mac was just thinking about - more proof than he should have needed - in the strange shape of Jack’s guarded voice.

Mac can hardly hear the rest of what Jack says over the sound of his own heart beating, up high in his throat.

“But I gotta warn you...” Jack continues. “Whatever you came here to do- Not sure you want to do it with this whole building on lockdown and the boss on her way down here.”

Jack has a boss. That and the organization of the floor Mac’s made his way across are part of what Mac had come here to find - the truth about his husband. He’d wanted, _needed_ , to find it.

And yet, Mac still has to close his eyes, momentarily, and let the reality of everything he’s only really said and thought before wash over him fully.

Mac’s feared the reality that Jack’s words reveal. He’s hurt, contemplating it. But he only just _feels_ it, fully and with no small part of himself held back in dumb, desperate hope, now.

Now that Jack’s saying, over the speakers and not - clearing the building, and here near Mac already - “Now... maybe you don’t exactly want to hear that. Believe me... I get it. A man gets a little... triggery, after he’s just had his better half try and kill him.”

That sugarcoating wears especially thin, and Mac feels his heart fall back out of his throat and into his gut like a stone.

For Jack to just come out and say it like that - that it had been him shooting at Mac and Bozer in the SUV-

“Promise not to try and kill you back if you come on out so we can talk?” Jack says, louder outside of the speakers than through them - standing just outside the office door.

Mac doesn’t even think over the odd way Jack frames his request.

“Pretty please, babe? You know how I hate playing hide and seek.”

And Mac does, is the thing. How often had he heard Jack complain, back when they were in Afghanistan, about how much easier his job would be if ‘the target’d just come right on out and let me kill ‘im. He knows I got ‘im. He just needs to get on out here, get it over with.’

That’s _not_ why Mac tucks the i-pad into the back of his clothing and stands, facing the doorway. 

It’s _not_.

He’s not testing Jack’s promise not to try and kill him again (yet). Or whether or not Jack can do it when they’re face to face, no rifle scope between them.

Okay, maybe it sort of is. But it’s also because Mac can’t listen to another word come out of Jack’s mouth while he’s unable to see whether the truth of it is reflected in the expression on Jack’s face. In eyes Mac’s stared into for hours. 

Jack has his back to Mac when Mac stands, clearing the corridor around him, so Mac gets that split second to try and school his own reactions to the sight of his husband, armed and searching for a spot to aim. To aim at _Mac_.

Jack’s moves look every bit as deadly as Mac remembers from their time with the army. He doesn’t visibly react when he turns and sees that Mac has seemingly appeared in the office out of thin air.

He freezes. They both do - Mac will admit it. It’s not even the gun Jack has pointed straight at his center mass - the _gun_ that _Jack_ has pointed at _him_ \- that turns the blood in Mac’s veins to ice and stops him solid.

It’s those dark eyes he wishes now he _hadn’t_ come out to see. Mac’s never seen them so entirely blank when aimed at him.

Blank - or empty? Maybe this is all that’s ever been behind Jack’s gaze as he looked at Mac, and Jack’s always just been a better spy than Mac’s been a judge of love when he thinks he sees it. 

Well, Mac’s a spy too, isn’t he? Hasn’t he trained to hide himself when to do anything else could get him killed? His dad has rarely let him out into the field to use that training, but it served Mac well the few times he got the chance.

Mac lets the cold, calm mask he perfected for a mission in Lisbon last year, impersonating a hired killer, creep across his face, tease at the very corners of his mouth, and hopefully shutter over whatever Mac not be able to hide so well otherwise in his eyes. 

“Hey, _babe_ ,” Mac says, letting the lie just keep creeping, to sink into him - holding his voice remarkably even and allowing Mac to force a little note of mocking into the pet name he throws back at his so-called spouse to match the cruel way Jack has mocked him. “Promise not to blow us both sky high if you put that gun away?” he says, borrowing more of Jack’s words. And he drops his eyes to his own coat pocket meaningfully, for a moment, to sell his bluff.

Well. To sell the part of what he’s insinuating that is actually a bluff. Mac did come to Jack’s office armed with an explosive - cobbled together with the things Mac took from the DXS safehouse and all the gunpowder from the bullets in the guns that Mac found there. But he and Jack aren’t standing anywhere near the spot he planted all of that

“Yeah?” Jack says, weapon never wavering. “You wired up?”

‘Cold and calm,’ Mac reminds himself. He doesn’t bother nodding.

“What if I shoot you before you can reach into your pocket?”

“What if what I have in my pocket isn’t the only way to detonate?” And maybe Mac’s stupid heart still hasn’t learned - is still pushing him to test Jack, because then he says, “I still know a thing or two about IEDs. If you’ve forgotten, we can head back to the house right now... I can remind you.” 

Mac’s thinking of the photos of him and Jack from back in Afghanistan that are still there, but all he really wants is to see what - if anything - the mention of the home he and Jack have shared for years now does to the other man’s hostile demeanor. He’s not sure how he would handle being back in that house, right now, with Jack looking at him like that. Like-

Like as far as Jack’s concerned, he may as well have pulled his trigger already. If Mac had been expecting, had been hoping for - what? A chink in Jack’s stone-like armor? A flinch, a sudden surge of sorrow... anything like that? What he gets is a flashfire of _rage_ burning Jack’s dark eyes almost black. Mac could lie to himself and pretend that that’s pain he sees fueling the flames of it - pretend that it’s not more likely the hate Mac’s feared seeing in Jack when they finally came face to face as they are now, with no more of Jack’s lies between them. Hate at the thought of what Jack’s had to put up with for the sake of whatever staying close to Mac all this time was supposed to achieve for him and the Phoenix Foundation?

“Oh, I remember,” Jack says in a voice lower than Mac’s ever heard from him. “I think you know I’ve already been plenty well reminded.”

Mac has no idea what that’s supposed to mean, but Jack does lower his gun as he walks further into the office, and Mac concentrates on that first.

“Toss it aside.”

“Not a chance,” Jack says, stopping directly behind and between the two chairs facing the desk Mac is standing behind. And then he grins a sharp grin that Mac can remember seeing aimed down at enemy targets from sniper’s nests.

Which, Mac will realize later, he really should have taken as the warning it would shortly prove itself to be.

 

|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|

 

If Jack ever meets the crooked criminal genius that is reportedly his father-in-law, assuming he doesn’t put a bullet in the man in that very same second, Jack knows exactly what he will say to break the ice before he takes his chance to break the old man’s face. 

‘You’ve raised one hell of a man,’ Jack can picture himself saying - too easily, because he’s imagined getting the chance to say as much before, just in a different tone, with a little less _actual_ hell implied.

But there’s no room for thoughts like that in this office, where there’s barely enough air for Jack to breathe without the pain in his chest damned near taking him to his knees. There’s no room for (grief) for fantasies. The ‘if’ of ‘if Jack ever’ meets Mac’s dad is all too real, Jack realizes as he stares into the strange but familiar face of his husband.

It _is_ the face of Jack’s husband - of Mac - even though it isn’t.

Mac isn’t cold. But this guy wearing Mac’s face is - he’s as cold as a sharp blade, smirking at Jack. Not even responding the first time Jack mentions how Mac tried to kill him - actually teasing Jack about it himself. This isn’t Mac, the way Jack knows him. The Mac Jack knows most likely never existed, and when Jack finally has the time to grieve about that, he’s going to need an appropriate amount of space to do it in.

An island might suffice. If there’s one out there big enough and that Jack can strand himself on to just kind of... scream and rage, and yes cry, after all of this. Provided Jack sees an after.

Mac threatened to blow the both of them sky high. Doesn’t matter _who_ Mac really is, something inside of Jack withers at the thought of this man taking himself out just so Jack can’t do it, nevermind the fact that Mac’s threatening to try and kill Jack _again_.

But there’s nothing for it. Jack came here knowing that if Mac was the one who’s broken into the Phoenix, he’d do anything - risk anything - to get close enough to him to get some answers before Mac tries to disappear again. Or before Mattie and reinforcements can get back here and want to take a crack at Mac themselves. Before Mac can call in his own backup. An image of an evil Bozer catburgling down from the ceiling slips through Jack’s mind, but he pushes it away, not wanting to be distracted.

Being distracting is Jack’s play. Mac asks him to throw his gun down, Jack grins and refuses... and then he tosses his gun far right.

It’s a lame move, but Jack’s betting on his at least knowing a few things about Mac that weren’t for show - one being the way Mac’s big ‘ol brain works, always thinking in such long, complicated strides... sometimes it’s the little baby steps of things that trip him up.  
Another being that Mac may be stubborn enough to blow up a building with himself in it when push comes to shove - but he’s also way too stubborn to do that before the pushing’s even started.

Jack’s gamble pays off. Mac’s eyes track the gun - just for a second, just on reflex. And that’s all that Jack needs to kick the legs out of one of the chairs beside him, catch it as it falls, and toss it in Mac’s general direction.

He dives around it and kicks off over the desk, throwing himself in a tackle at Mac as he comes down, and the room doesn’t go kaboom in the process. 

Jack had intended the chair he threw to take any bullets Mac might let fly at him as soon as he moved, but no shots rang out. Mac merely shoved the chair away from him, and as he and Jack collide, he doesn’t reach into his pockets or for his waistband. He grapples with Jack instead, and when they hit the floor, they only remain in contact with it for a moment. Jack twists as they descend, trying to land with Mac in a hold, but Mac counters the move immediately. He rolls himself back onto his feet, and Jack does the same.

They end up circling each other. Jack tries hard to level out his breathing and not be the old man out of the two of them, breathing hard before the fight’s barely even started. He doesn’t need any appearances of weakness - he’s feeling plenty weak already. His mind can’t help but go back to the only other time he and Mac have ever physically fought, back in the Sandbox, and the memory is one that’s become so fond to him over the years that it’s legitimately painful for Jack to remember it next to everything that’s happened.

Jack lunges, and Mac dodges to the right, but Jack is ready for that, and he manages to catch Mac on his chin, clipping him hard enough to spin him around and knock him off his feet.

All he can see as Mac pulls himself off the floor is a younger, even skinnier _Specialist_ Angus MacGyver, glaring up at Jack from the dirt floor of the barracks where they met and eventually fell in love. 

Or so Jack had thought.

“Come on, Sweetie...” Jack says, channeling the white hot pain that shoots through him at the thought into roughening his voice so it doesn’t break. Into anger - at himself. At _that_ Mac, for becoming this one. For maybe having been him all along and fooling Jack so completely. He punches Mac again, just as he sees the muscles in Mac’s shoulders tense like he’s fixing to lunge back at Jack. “I told you...” he says, grabbing Mac around the waist and tossing him over on his back, “I just want to... talk.” Between his words he manages to punch Mac once more. 

He’s trying not to see his _husband_ flinch beneath the blows, his lip busting, redness spreading along his jaw.

Mac catches Jack’s fist the third time it falls, partially because Jack loses his gumption halfway through the punch, and partially because this Mac is every bit as scrappy now, wrestling with Jack on the executive floor of a black ops headquarters, as he was when he and Jack wrestled in the dirt in Afghanistan.

Jack gets one more punch in, but when he tries to get Mac in a headlock - he doesn’t want to have to _beat_ Mac into submission, angry or not; he just needs to get Mac pinned down - Mac slips away. 

“Yeah, I think I’ve... heard... enough, _Sweetie_ ,” Mac grunts out between the blows he lands on Jack as they grapple again for the upperhand.

Jack hisses as much in offense as he does in pain, hardly even registering that he’s the one who’s come out on top - flipping Mac over onto his back yet again.

“Hey! _I’m_ the one with the pet names, buddy,” Jack says, not intending the words to sound so much like a whine rather than an accusation. “You hardly _ever_ use any!”

“Yeah,” Mac huffs out, between taking Jack’s elbow to his stomach the first and second times Jack strikes him, “because they’re _stupid_.”

‘ _You take that back_!’ is on the tip of Jack’s tongue. Mac’s always seemed to love Jack’s pet names - he blushes the prettiest shade of-

And then Jack takes a knee to his face and his mouth fills with blood, the words washing away.

By the time Jack’s blinked away the starbursts that have popped behind his eyelids from the impact, Mac’s stumbled to his feet. Jack launches himself at Mac’s back with a sound he’s going to pretend isn’t so much like a growl.

“ _I’m_ stupid?” Jack demands, getting one arm looped over one of Mac’s shoulders and around his neck, despite how Mac claws at his grip. “Your goddamned paperclip doodles cost us two washing machines and a _toaster_! But calling my _husband_ ‘Sweetie’, _that’s_ stupid?”

Mac practically _howls_ , an angry sound Jack’s never heard come out of him. The surprise of it, as much as the elbow Mac plants in Jack’s gut, contribute to Mac’s being able to break Jack’s hold, kick off of the office wall now directly in front of him, and basically somersault over Jack’s back. He goes down to the floor and takes Jack with him, both arms linked around Jack’s neck in the kind of secure headlock that Jack had been trying to get on him.

If Mac’s open to killing Jack right this second - and after the bomb at the house, Mac’s taunts, there’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t be - this could be the end of everything, right here. Mac could snap Jack’s neck. He could choke Jack out and blow up the building with Jack unconscious inside of it just as soon as he’s clear.

And still, Jack thinks it’s maybe just as much of a shock for him as it is for Mac (Jack can feel how Mac startles then freezes beneath him) when Jack stops scrabbling at Mac’s arms, lowers one hand, and brings it back up with one of the handguns he took off of Mac the first time he tackled him.

And then Jack presses the muzzle of the gun directly to Mac’s temple.


	8. Chapter 8

About a year after the wedding, Mac and Jack took a trip to Vegas. They called it their _Almost-_ Anniversary and planned to repeat the trip annually.

Only by the time their next anniversary came around, they’d both started working steadily... They got as far as the arrivals gate at McCarren, and then Mac’s phone lit up with urgent messages from the DXS about a “study” that had gone wrong, time sensitive “samples” that had to be recaptured; Jack’s voicemailbox was full of calls from his boss about a critical _shipment_ that had never reached its destination. They made a lot of promises to reschedule, but none of those promises got fulfilled, and this year they hadn’t even talked about trying again.

But Mac’s not thinking about that with Jack lying half on top of him, still wrapped up in Mac’s arms, and the pounding of Mac’s own heart seeming to fill the room he and Jack have reduced to near shambles. With his own ragged breaths sounding so loud, Mac wouldn’t be able to tell if his husband was still breathing at all if he couldn’t see the rise and fall of Jack’s chest.

If Jack didn’t have a gun pressed firmly to Mac’s temple.

Mac thinks about casino lights reflecting in the dark shine of Jack’s smiling eyes... He thinks about Jack’s laughter rising above the sound of busy crowds, slot machines and roulette wheels.

Most of all he thinks about lying with Jack in the large, luxurious bed that had been in the suite Jack had surprised Mac with on the trip. On day three of their stay, they’d slept in after a wild night and they lay almost just like this - Mac slouched into the volumptuous pillows piled between him and the bed’s massive headboard, Jack lying between Mac’s legs beneath the bed’s snowy white sheets and downy duvet, head on Mac’s shoulder.

They just lay there and watched tv, ordered in room service and brought it back to the bed with them. Every now and then, Jack would roll his head to the side and instigate a kiss with pancake syrup-sweet lips. 

Mac closes his eyes, presses his face into the back of Jack’s head, and holds on to his husband - his _husband_ , whoever else... _whatever_ else he may be.

But nothing happens.

An age passes and nothing happens.

And then the blood rushing through Mac’s ears subsides, and he can hear Jack’s too loud, too short breaths... he feels Jack’s gunhand shake.

He feels _Jack’s_ gunhand.... _shake_.

“...don’t make me, please. _Please_ , please, please, baby, don’t make me...” Mac finally hears Jack saying, a barely-there whisper in the brutal silence that is apparently suffocating them both. Jack’s voice is barely a whisper, breathless and strained membrane-thin.

It draws Mac’s gaze before he can think better of moving, and he turns his head towards Jack before the flick of Jack’s wrist presses the gun more sharply into Mac’s skin. 

“ _Don’t_ move,” Jack barks at him.

But Mac’s seen enough. He’s seen the gun that Jack is holding. But more importantly, he’s seen the wet sheen of Jack’s eyes in profile, the severe emotion twisting the lines of Jack’s face. Mac swallows, blinking away the moisture that’s gathered in his own eyes.

“I’m not.”

“I fucking _mean_ it, Angus-”

“I’m not, Jack,” Mac repeats, raising his hands slightly where they rest against Jack’s chest to prove he has nothing on him to move _for_. “I promise. I’m not.”

His mind is the thing moving. Considering. It’s too little after everything... Isn’t it?

That Jack can’t, or _won’t_ , kill him. Maybe it isn’t much, but it’s something.

Something Mac hadn’t thought he’d had when Jack had strolled into this office looking like he could kill Mac in one move and go on about his day like it meant nothing to him either way.

“How is this happening?” comes out of Mac’s mouth, in his voice, although he didn’t actually mean to speak.

Jack huffs out something that almost sounds like a laugh Mac’s heard before, if somewhat higher pitched than usual. “I think that oughtta be my line, don’t you?” Jack asks.

And maybe he’s faking the quaver in his voice... maybe he’s faking all of it - the reluctance to shoot Mac, here at the last moment. Maybe killing Mac has never been Jack’s goal - or his goal has changed now that Mac’s here in Jack’s building, where presumably Jack will receive backup at any moment now that can help Jack contain and interrogate-

Or maybe Mac can take a moment and think about what’s strange about the thing Jack’s just said - one more strange thing to add to the growing lists of reasons Mac’s heart keeps tugging, again and again, at Mac’s brain, seemingly trying to tell him-

Something Mac’s not going to get that moment to think about, actually. Because somewhere in the building, _someone_ trips the explosives Mac rigged up to ensure him an exit off of this floor even if all of the existing exits became unavailable to them.

In one of his pockets, Mac’s trigger begins to beep.

“ _What the fuck is that_?” Jack demands. 

“I’m sorry, Jack,” Mac says sincerely. What’s about to happen is going to make Jack think exactly the opposite of what Mac hopes he’ll still get the chance to say.

“What are you-”

“If you see your Pops before I do... tell him I’m coming.” 

“ _No_ , MAC-”

The way Jack’s voice breaks guts Mac, and he presses his lips to Jack’s temple as best he can from the way they’re angled, just before everything falls into chaos.

**Author's Note:**

> ' _Nobody does it better_  
>  Makes me feel sad for the rest  
> Nobody does it half as good as you  
> Baby, you're the best...
> 
>  
> 
> _I wasn't lookin' but somehow you found me_  
>  It tried to hide from your love light  
> But like heaven above me  
> The spy who loved me  
> Is keepin' all my secrets safe tonight...
> 
>  
> 
>  _And nobody does it better_  
>  Though sometimes I wish someone could  
> Nobody does it quite the way you do  
> Why'd you have to be so good?"


End file.
